Bioneers

Restoring Our Relationship With Mother Earth

An interview with Tom Goldtooth

by Kim Ridley

Tom Goldtooth is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, which includes a vast network of indigenous communities in North America and increasingly, around the world. Based in Minnesota near the Canadian border, IEN was established in 1990 by grassroots indigenous communities and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues. IEN’s activities include building the capacities of indigenous communities and leaders to develop mechanisms to protect sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, the health of people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities. He talks about IEN’s work with Kim Ridley.

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What’s that Smell?

Citizens use bucket brigades to monitor polluters.

by Peter Montague

Problem: Often, people living around a factory can see or smell emissions, but when they complain they are told it’s all in their heads. The only way to be sure is to test air samples, but factory managers and regulatory agencies often refuse to test, or claim their own tests prove there are no problems. People know industrial smells are probably not “harmless” but they are often stymied by indifferent officials, corporate and governmental.

Solution: Citizens can now take their own air samples and have them tested for toxic pollution.

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Greening the Big Apple

New York City reduces purchase of PVC and other toxic products.

by Center for Health, Environment and Justice and Citizens' Environmental Coalition

The Big Apple is wielding its $11 billion annual purchasing budget to drive the demand for safer, environmentally friendly products. In December 2005, the New York City Council passed a package of bills that will reduce the purchase of products containing hazardous substances including polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, lead, mercury and toxic flame retardants.

“We applaud members of the New York City Council for recognizing the growing public health and environmental threats posed by products like PVC, the poison plastic,” says Lois Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. “This new legislation is a major victory for the health of millions of New Yorkers. When produced or burned, PVC may lead to the formation of dioxins, known to cause cancer and other health threats.”

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Lessons From Love Canal

By asking the right questions and banding together, citizens can hold corporate polluters accountable.

by Lois Gibbs

The story behind Love Canal is not the story of Lois Gibbs. Love Canal was a community of low-income, working-class, blue-collar families—my husband made $10,000 a year; I thought I was middle class—with high school or less education. Without any training, this community brought the President of the United States to our backyard, under our command, to do what was right. If we could do that as a small community, think of what could happen if all of us focused very carefully on a few, over-arching things, what change we could make.

Resistance at Desert Rock

Navajo grandmothers and youth are protesting construction of a coal-fired power plant

by Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy & Health News

It has been snowing in the Four Corners region of the Navajo Nation, near Burnham, New Mexico, where Navajo grandmothers and youth are camped out in the desert, protesting a proposed 1500-megawatt coal- burning power plant. (See photos here and listen here.) The plant would be built by Sithe Global Power of Houston, Tex., and co-owned by the Dine' Power Authority, a Navajo tribal enterprise. In the Navajo language, dine' means roughly "the people."

This would be the third coal-fired power plant built on Navajo land, and the first co-owned by the Navajos themselves. But not all Navajos want to own a plant that powers air conditioners in Arizona and southern California by burning 5.5 million tons of Navajo coal each year. "They get the electricity and we get the pollution," said one protester.

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Grub: An Interview with Bryant Terry

by Arty Mangan

Bryant Terry is an activist chef and co-author with Anna Lapee’ of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen

AM: What is grub?

Bryant: When Anna and I started throwing around ideas for our book, we thought about the terms organic and sustainable, which we embraced, but we wanted to offer the world a term that went beyond describing the quality of food. So we redefined the word ‘grub.’ Our definition includes not only the quality of food, but also things like worker’s rights and food equity. For us, Grub is food that’s grown locally, that’s in season, and that respects the farmer and the farm workers. It’s also food that’s accessible to all because there is a disparity in access to healthy food. Grub should be available to everyone.

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SUMMIT: Challenges of Climate Change in the Great Lakes

Start: 2007-07-26 07:00

End: 2007-07-27 15:30

Timezone: US/Michigan

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Genetic Roulette: The Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods

An Interview with Jeffrey M. Smith: Part One

by Arty Mangan

AM: How prevalent are genetically engineered (GMO) crops in the food we eat?

Jeffrey: Soy, corn, cotton and canola are used in vegetable oil and soy and corn and their derivatives are prevalent in processed food. My guess is that 90 percent of processed foods contain derivatives of one of these four, which may translate to about 70 percent of all foods sold in the supermarket. There are also dairy products from cows injected with bovine growth hormone. There’s Hawaiian papaya, a little bit of zucchini and crookneck squash. There are also enzymes, additives, processing agents that are not even listed on the label but are created from genetically modified microorganisms and used in the preparation of a lot of foods. One that is listed on the label is aspartame. And finally there are milk and meat products from animals that have been feed genetically engineered foods.

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The Art of Leadership in Sonoma, CA

Start: 2007-09-10 16:24

End: 2007-09-13 13:24

Timezone: US/Pacific

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Genetic Roulette: The Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods

An interview with Jeffrey Smith: Part Two

by Arty Mangan

Read Part One of this interview

AM: Here’s a quote from your book: "An internal memo from FDA’s division of anti-infective drug products said that the benefit to be gained by the use of Kanamycin, that’s the antibiotic resistant marker in transgenic plants, is outweighed by the risk.” How are antibiotic resistant markers used and what are the risks?

Jeffrey: When you insert the genes through the gene gun method or by infecting it through bacteria, you don’t know which of the cells got the genes that you want to get into the DNA. You can’t look at a microscope and tell. So what they do is add an anti-biotic resistant marker gene along with your target transgene. The antibiotic resistant marker gene produces a protein, which confers invisibility to a particular antibiotic to the cell. So scientists will douse all of the cells with this particular antibiotic, killing all of them except the very few that ended up incorporating the transgene into their DNA where it’s being expressed. It’s only used for this one moment to select the transformed cells but it becomes cloned and reproduced into the millions of acres of plants and consumed by humans and animals.